President Biden on Tuesday railed against media figures and politicians whom he said spread white supremacist ideology for “power and profit.”
Speaking in Buffalo, New York, he blamed hatemongers in the media and politics for motivating the 18-year-old White man to carry out the mass shooting Saturday in a Black neighborhood in the city.
Mr. Biden mourned the violence as a “simple and straightforward” act of domestic terrorism “inflicted in the service of hate and the vicious thirst for power.”
He blamed “a hate that through the media, and politics, the internet, has radicalized [and] alienated any … lost and isolated individuals into falsely believing that they will be replaced, that’s the word, replaced, by people who don’t look like them.”
“I call all Americans to reject the lie,” he said. “And I condemn those who spread the lie for power, political gain, and for profit.”
Authorities said the accused shooter, Payton Gendron, was motivated by racial animus when he targeted shoppers at the grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Mr. Gendron is believed to have posted a 180-page manifesto online that outlined a self-described White supremacist ideology motivating the attack, including his fears of a “complete racial and cultural replacement of the European people.”
Mr. Biden’s remarks, echo messaging from Democrats in Congress who have condemned Republicans and Fox News hosts for the spread of the “great replacement” theory, which holds that non-White people are infiltrating America to wipe out Whites and diminish their political influence.
The White House has declined to specifically call out Republicans or any specific individuals for spreading the theory or other white supremacist propaganda.
“This is not about politics,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday. “This is about people’s lives,” she said. “It’s about making sure that we’re doing everything we can [to] uproot this evil that we’re seeing. That’s what the president is going to continue to do.”
In his remarks in Buffalo, Mr. Biden cut closer to the bone.
“White supremacy is a poison… running through our body politic,” he said. “It’s been allowed to fester and grow right in front of our eyes.”
“We have to refuse to live in a country where fear and lies are packaged for power and for profit,” he said.